EA Sports is (finally) putting South Alabama in the game

MOBILE, Alabama --South Alabama may not be in the game just yet, as the EA Sports advertisement for its "NCAA Football 13'' game suggests, but EA Sports will be in Ladd-Peebles Stadium for the Jaguars' game Saturday against Nicholls State. In fact, the popular game company has been in the stadium since Thursday, collecting data, photographic and video scans and interviews for South Alabama's inclusion in the video game next year.

Greg Palinkas, an environment artist with Electronic Arts Tiburon, adjusts the FARO Focus 3D laser scanner before making scans of Ladd-Peebles Stadium from the south endzone stands in Mobile, Ala., Friday, Sept. 7, 2012. Palinkas is part of a team gathering data on the stadium and the University of South Alabama football team for inclusion in EA Sports' "NCAA Football" video game. (Press-Register, G.M. Andrews)

Due to "misinformation,'' according to site producer Ben Haumiller, the Jags were left out of this year's game, the only one of the 124 eligible Football Bowl Subdivision teams not to be included. When news reached South Alabama students and fans prior to the release of "NCAA Football 13,'' several requested the Jags be added to the game. It was too late to add USA to this year's game, but EA Sports offered to make it up to the school by providing extras for the Jags when they are added to the roster of teams in next year's game.

That promise brought a four-person EA Sports crew to town Thursday for three days of information gathering in preparation of adding USA to next year's game, with the extras such as a stadium scan that will duplicate Ladd-Peebles Stadium exactly, crowd noise and fan chants during today's game that will be used in the game and interviewing members of the coaching staff who will help make the Jags' play-calling and offensive and defensive formations as accurate as possible.

The EA Sports crew will also film the cheerleaders and the team's run-out entrance onto the field Saturday for use in the game and mascot SouthPaw was filmed Thursday for inclusion in the "Mascot Mash-Up" portion of the game.

"It's neat because a lot of the players are fans of the game and a lot of coaches may have played (similar) games when they were younger but have probably gotten away from it. But they understand the significance of it and for their team it can be a great team-building exercise,'' Haumiller said of the reaction the EA Sports group has received in town. "The (players) will get together on a Friday night and play the game all night long. ... Kids are learning about the sport. They're learning what a cover 2 defense is at a younger age because they learn it playing the game.

"They love the fact that we are here to promote their school because it's a big recruiting tool as well. To be able to say that EA was at South Alabama - hey, we weren't anywhere else this weekend.''

Haumiller said when it was discovered South Alabama had been omitted from this year's game, the company was "disheartened.'' He said the next step was to make sure the Jags were taken care of next year. "We could not have been any more embarrassed and saddened that it happen,'' he said. "So that was one of the things where we wanted to make it right and how this trip became involved, getting everything we possibly can get to represent South Alabama so when they do make their debut it's the right debut. It's not just, yes, we added them, it's yeah, here they are, and this is everything about them.''

On Thursday, while two EA Sports representatives interviewed coaches about the playbook (the Jags' coaching staff is going to put together a DVD of some of its plays for the group to use in the game), filmed SouthPaw and talked with other school officials, Gregory Palinkas, an environment artist, and Dan Goodman worked from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. collecting photographs and scans of the stadium's interior and exterior for use in creating the look of the game. The duo returned on Friday to finish things up, including 360-degree scans inside the stadium.

"We're doing scans and photograph references, capturing material information, so we can get everything down to the gravel so that we can capture everything as true to life as we can,'' Palinkas said. The main work was doing the scans. "That scan is amazing,'' Palinkas said. "... We're capturing 44 million points per scan. We'll be able to pick up every nut and bolt that makes up this place. It's insane. It's fantastic.

"It not only will scan the points but it will take color photographs and when you put it into the software (in process of building the stadium for the game) you can overlay the color into those points and you get an accurate representation of the colorization of the lights during the day, what the different materials look like. It's really outstanding.''

It's all part of what Palinkas described as the "big tour,'' which is work and preparations produced for the upper-tier teams - and those teams that were omitted apparently.

"We'll be here Saturday for game day to capture what the crowd sounds like, get some crowd audio in, get more photograph references of the crowd itself. Because this is going to be South Alabama's first time in the game we want to make sure that we absolutely nail it and get everything as close as we can to perfection so when you guys buy the game they'll see the stadium just as it is,'' Palinkas said.

After all the information is collected this week the group will head back to their offices in Orlando, Fla., and start putting the pieces together for South Alabama's inclusion in the game. The entire process will take probably four to five weeks to complete. But it won't stop there. After the plays have been put in, the crowd noises and the stadium information and the Jags are ready to go, there will be updates and tweaks made to the final product right up until the moment before the entire game, with all 124 teams included, is ready to be created and made available to the public.